Thin people make fat people unhappy

If you are overweight, you are not necessarily destined to be sad, says a new study from the University of Colorado- Boulder.

In the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the paper tracks the three-way relationship between obesity, life satisfaction and where you live. It finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that obese men and women who live in U.S. counties with high levels of obesity are much happier than obese men and women who live in slenderer areas.

Nor do people of “normal weight” enjoy much advantage in neighborhoods with more flesh per capita.

“This illustrates the importance of looking like the people around you when it comes to satisfaction with life,” explains co-author Philip Pendergast.

Researchers drew on a sample of 1.3 million adults across the country. The participants rated their happiness levels, which were then splayed across the obeso-meter by county.

“Where obesity is more common, there is less difference among obese, severely obese, and non-obese individuals’ life satisfaction,” the researchers write, “but where obesity is less common, the difference in life satisfaction between the obese (including the severely obese) and non-obese is greater.”

To translate this finding into layperson- speak: The fat cells are not releasing depression chemicals into your bloodstream. If you are both heavyset and heavyhearted, it is more likely due to comparing yourself to others and feeling inadequate.

Last modified: June 10, 2014
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